Drug counseling program trains dogs to help those with addictions cope

TOWN OF ULSTER >> Sloane LaPointe credits her 8-month-old dog, Moo, and their participation in the Awareness counseling program with helping her maintain a drug-free lifestyle.

“When you’re in recovery and you feel completely alone, it’s nice to have something there with you,” LaPointe said recently. “Someone that needs you. Someone that you can go to every day that doesn’t judge you. That constantly loves you. You need that to recover. And that’s what Awareness brings to it, too. It’s not even about making you more comfortable. It’s about having that bond with something.”

Awareness, an acronym for Adolescents Working Assisting Resolving Empowering Nurturing Each Student Substantively, is a peer-based alcohol education and counseling program for teenagers and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24. It was formed in 2007 in response to a fatal drunk driving car crash during the night of a local high school’s prom. The program has since expanded to include substance abuse as well as shoplifting and anger issues.

Marie Shultis, the developer and adult coordinator of the program, said a group of college students also formed an Awareness Club at SUNY New Paltz a few years ago. She said the college students have since taken the counseling tools used in the program and created a workbook that will allow others to duplicate the program over an eight-week period. The idea is that anyone can pick up that workbook and know what to do each week, she said.

The workbook allowed her to use a $5,000 grant from Ulster County to pilot that eight-week program for 50 youths and young adults, Shultis said. She said as part of that program, she is working with LaPointe and other young women to train them to be counselors in the program. The women are also using their dogs as a therapeutic way to get other people in counseling to open up to them, Shultis said.

Each of the dogs involved was adopted from the Ulster County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, including Shultis’ dog, Annie, and LaPointe’s own Moo. Also learning to be counselors in the program are LaPointe’s sister, Logan LaPointe, and her dog, Shmerbie, and Kayla Wolfrom and her dog, Irie.

Shultis, the operations manager and volunteer coordinator for the SPCA, said all the women are volunteers who participate in the program after work. Logan LaPointe, 24, is the assistant kennel manager at the SPCA, and Wolfrom, 24, is the cat manager at the shelter.

While they have ties to the shelter, Awareness is not a part of the SPCA, Shultis noted. The young women all initially agreed to become trainers to help her with the program, she said.

“But then somewhere along the lines, it turned into everybody participating and sharing,” Shultis said.

Wolfrom said the program brings out a different side of its participants. She said they started to see things they could improve about themselves even without having had an addiction.

Logan LaPointe said the program has been a kind of therapy for her. She said her mother died a few years ago and the Awareness program allowed her to open up and talk about issues.

“And we just talk about everything at the end,” she said.

Wolfrom said that while the women are in their own training, their dogs are also learning how to behave in a program setting. She said the dogs are learning to be calm while the women are talking.

Sloane LaPointe, who is 23, said when the women get together with their dogs to go over the workbook, it is like being with family. She said she has a bit of anxiety, so going to meetings where she is in a brightly lit room, sitting in a circle and drinking coffee with other people just does not work for her. She said the Awareness program gives teens and young adults the chance to get clean and sober through the support of people their own age, as well as adult counselors like Shultis. She said the program examines triggers for addiction and techniques to stay away from drugs.

Sloane said she started smoking marijuana when she was 16 and then moved on to other drugs, including heroin. She said she tried a few different rehabilitation programs and meetings to get clean, but ended up on probation. At this point, she’s been on probation for a year and still has three more years to go. In the meantime, she said she wants to help others recover from their addictions.

“I think everyone has a purpose on earth and I think one of my main purposes is to help people with addiction,” she said. “It’s scary. And a lot of kids are into it and they can’t get out. And they don’t know a different way to live. And I think this will help them.”